Facebook is refusing to take down a page on its website that compares the rights of pedophiles to those of gays.

The offensive page is titled “Equal rights for Pedophiles.” It makes the case that: “We are living in a time where others’ beliefs and desires are becoming more tolerant. If gay rights are becoming more prominent within America, I say that we should have a fair chance in life just as anyone else does. We are people just like everyone else.”

Gays and lesbians, as you know, won major victories in the Supreme Court last week.

Also last week, Facebook promised — under pressure from advertisers — to keep a more careful watch over what is posted on its website. “We are taking action,” Facebook declared in a Web post after several advertisers bolted.

As I’ll explain in a minute, that’s going to be a difficult promise for Facebook to keep, since hundreds, if not thousands, of convicted sex offenders have pages on Facebook where they can do things virtually that would get them locked up in the real world.

As you would suspect, the pedophile page has sparked a heated response — most of which is obscene and can’t be repeated here. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is also feeling the heat — in large part because after hundreds of complaints, the social-media site wouldn’t take the page down.

“Thank you for taking the time to report something you feel may violate our Community Standards,” was Facebook’s response. “Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment.

“We reviewed the page you reported for containing nudity and pornography and found it doesn’t violate our community standard on nudity or pornography,” Facebook said.

Jay Marshall, the head of the Global Alliance Against Minor Exploitation, a group that has been reporting the existence of kiddie porn material to Facebook (and to me), is also peeved that Zuckerberg’s social network won’t even create a “child exploitation” category to file complaints under.

“We have mass reported (Equal rights for Pedophiles) as containing ‘nudity and pornography’ since that’s the most appropriate report option, but it is not very suitable,” said Marshall.

The complaints about the “Equal rights for Pedophiles” page are very similar to the ones I expressed last fall when Facebook refused to take down a page that carried the title “Pedophiles are people too.”

At that time, Facebook said “Pedophiles are people too” met its community standards. And it said the page was nothing more than “controversial humor.”

Facebook reversed that stance after I started calling and meeting with companies that advertised on the site. Suddenly “Pedophiles are people too” wasn’t so funny and it was taken down.

Marshall, who is a Brit and a teacher and lives in Hong Kong, was negotiating an agreement with Facebook but, frustrated, ended up halting the talks a few weeks ago.

In an effort at full disclosure, let me say that I suggested that Marshall talk with Facebook before taking more radical action. I also pointed out to Marshall that the only way I got Facebook to listen was through advertisers.

UK companies BSkyB and Marks and Spencer recently pulled ads from Facebook. And Marshall’s group has also sent complaints to companies like Citigroup and Hewlett-Packard, both of which advertise on Facebook. Those companies seem to be investigating the situation.

Over the past two weeks, Marshall has also supplied me — on a dare — with a list of 200 convicted sex offenders who have Facebook pages.

This is the part of the column where I get to share my unvarnished, uncensored, unrelenting opinion. So here it is: I think Facebook, a publicly traded company, has a very serious problem.

Wall Street seems very concerned over whether Zuckerberg’s 9-year-old company can adapt to the mobile world.

Investors should be more worried about whether the Facebook website you call up on your computer — the company’s original product — can be drastically changed to prevent offensive material from appearing side by side with ads.

In case you don’t know, here is how Facebook works.

If I go onto my Facebook page (and I don’t really have one, but pretend I do), ads will appear up and down the right side reflecting my tastes. So there will be ads for sports, cars, liquor, Twizzlers and maybe some insurance and brokerage services.

If I were the type of person who also happens to be into bestiality, then those ads and stories about people having sex with animals will appear on the screen side by side.

There is nothing Facebook can currently do about this — it’s the way the site is set up.

Facebook could come up with a completely different format for displaying ads. Or it could hire an army of censors to comb through every page posted by people around the world and investigate every complaint thoroughly so that ads for, say, a newspaper or tourist bureau don’t appear when I happen upon a page posted by one of those convicted sex offenders.